Artificial Intelligence has found yet another taker in the form of facebook inc, which has used the technology to develop a system that describes pictures and their content to those users who are visually impaired. AI has been increasingly getting popular with tech companies who are finding new and innovative use for the same in a variety of ways. This is also sure to propel the theory put forth by Google CEO – Satya Nadela’s prediction that we are looking at a future comprising of man with machines, in contrary to popular belief of man vs machines.
Facebook rolled out this feature on Monday which helps its users with visual impairment to not miss out on one of the integral factors of a social networking site – pictures. This technology enjoys people with such impairment enjoy the photos posted on the leading social networking website. A certain machine learning technology was employed by facebook to recognize objects in the pictures and then describe them aloud to aid those who cannot see them themselves.
Accessibility specialist, Matt King, commented on the launch – As Facebook becomes an increasingly visual experience, we hope our new automatic alternative text technology will help the blind community experience Facebook the same way others enjoy it. The aforementioned feature is currently being tested on select devices that are powered by iOS and have the screen reader language set to English. The company plans to expand the features to other devices and to other languages in the near future.
King himself lost his vision while he was a college student studying electrical engineering. The principle behind this feature is based on a neural network which is taught to recognize things in pictures using a million examples of the same thing. The technology works across facebook’s family of applications.
